Pure Gain Ballet music from Meyerbeer operas - heard by ROBERT ANDERSON '... very stylish playing ...'

At last I can hear some Meyerbeer rather than read about him as curdled by Wagner. For most of my life the situation has been as described by Shaw in 1886: 'Meyerbeer, the impressive, the original, the historical, the much imitated inimitable, is now only "the Jew that Wagner drew".' It is of course no good trying to assess the operas from this ballet music, and it remains a notable fact that Meyerbeer deserted Covent Garden just months before I was born. All these operas were written for Paris, and Scribe had a hand in all the librettos...

GIACOMO MEYERBEER

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

GERMANY